Bending Die Design for a Pre-Formed Sheet Metal with a Golden Finger Feature

In this paper, authors proposed an effective quality index of bending operation and a new punch profile design method to prevent defects. The proposed quality index is presented in terms of distance of fracture location with respect to the topmost plane of blank, the maximum von Mises stress, and the maximum shear stress. The Taguchi method with L18 orthogonal array was adopted to evaluate the effects of design parameters and find out the optimum design of punch profile. A new punch feature called “golden finger” was proposed to control the material flow and move the fracture defects out of the trimming line. The results of this study had demonstrated the optimum die design can be achieved with the proposed golden finger feature to obtain a sound product.